Passed the church where i got married in 2001 last night, and wife said "the best day of your life" to which I said no next year when Albion beat Palace that was the best.
I know so many go on about the Bradford day, and can imagine that was something for those who went, the fact remained it was the Palace game that got us up. A bad day for us, good one for Wolves and it could have gone wrong.
Only time I went on the Hawthorns pitch too and spoke to Frank Skinner as we stared on at the scenes. Incredible occasion.
I'd always envied a season ticket holder diehard who was 20 when we beat Oldham in 76 and spoke of that day as a young lad being there. 2002 was the day that all of us who were there will never have an occasion that will be topped, unless we do something like Leicester did.
Sixteen years was a ridiculous length of time and even now I still can't get too upset at the miserable days for us as the 90s still feels raw.

A wonderful, wonderful day. Truly memorable but without the raw angst and emotional roller coaster that was Bradford.

I never doubted we'd win that game. Very rarely have I ever felt that as an Albion fan. It was like all the ups and downs we'd gone through the previous season and those fraught 90mins at Bradford the previous week had gone and once I saw the focus on the player's faces I knew we were winners.

I remember looking at the players faces and thinking this game is ours, they look so pumped up
that defeat never looked an option. When it later emerged that Megson's pre match talk and plan
involved getting all the families into the dressing room and telling the players that winning was as
much for securing their futures, the look on the players faces as they came out the tunnel made
sense.

By that game we were unstoppable, I went to that game knowing that something special was
going to happen, yet I was still unprepared for how I felt after the final whistle

(04-21-2017, 10:01 AM)baggy1 Wrote: Still gives me goosebumps. The pure relief was immense and the tears flowed. The raw emotion when Big Dave scored was amazing.

Bob Taylor's pounce on that goalie howler was the biggest eruption ever seen at the Hawthorns. It was that moment that it was all decided. the rest of the game was just a celebration waiting for the whistle.

For those that have the DVD of the entire game, there is a shot of the SME after Taylor has scored the second goal against Palace that shows wild celebrations apart from a grey haired old git in the middle, in absolute bits. That was me, and the emotion was the realisation that we were heading into the Premier League and I was going to fulfil a dream of seeing West Brom play at the highest level. No more under the shadows of the fishy fuckers in Witton, bigger than the Wo1ve5, and a payback for all of the grotty away trips to places like Hartlepool, Rotherham, Blackpool, Grimsby etc. The young kids next to me couldn’t understand why I was crying…. let’s hope they never go through the wilderness years like what we had to.

I cried as a young kid in '82 at Highbury, it was simply not feasible we couldn't beat second division QPR;
I cried at Twerton Park in '91 as a teenager in the realisation that we really were shit and 100+ years of history had just been undone; and
I cried 15 years ago today - All those years of utter shit were laid to rest, and to top it off we'd overhauled those bastards that bricked us at HT in '91, that had us locked in until 6pm in '94 and the years of them continually throwing cups of piss, hot coffee and opened topped pies down from above.

The only time I can ever imagine the Albion doing that to me again is during "Abide with Me" at the FA Cup final.

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Forgot Mulumbu's goal to beat the Villa with 10 men, brought a tear to the eye but not streaming like those above, as did OT in 2002/03 our first game back.